“Under this administration, the library has been the first stop for people looking to better themselves,” paraphrased the mayor.
“And they’ve come because they knew the library was the one place that wouldn’t turn them away,” Serenity said. “No matter how far afield the request, a librarian would smile and say, ‘Let’s see what we can find out.’”
The mayor went two-for-two on getting things mostly right.
Serenity grew bold. “It hasn’t been enough. They’ve come with questions, but because we didn’t have resources, too often they left with their needs—and the needs of the city of Maddington—unfulfilled. People have lost opportunities, businesses have gone unopened, existing businesses have folded, and people have died, because people have come to the library looking for help that they could not find anywhere else, and our library has only been able to offer a Band-Aid. No more.”
The mayor was getting into it. He said the lines with real emotion, and shouted “no more” at the top of his lungs.
Powell sidled up to Serenity and whispered, “Trucks are passing Kroger. Wrap it up.”
She whispered, “What if someone had the courage to end that?”
Serenity looked down the street and saw the first eighteen-wheeler coming and whispered in his ear.
He shouted, “Here, in Maddington, today, we do.”
A few people in the crowd cheered.
Serenity whispered, “Thanks to an innovative public/private funding partnership, which I am personally leading, today we begin the most ambitious building project in American history, here in Maddington, by the people of Maddington, and for the people of Maddington.”
The mayor shouted the line and turned to her for more.
She said, “As we speak, trucks are arriving with the first material for a project impossible anywhere but a city as ambitious as Maddington. And when it’s done, we will have a MAD that will do all of those things, and more.”
The mayor repeated.
Serenity said, “With the whole city pulling together, we will build a seven-story library in seven days.”
The mayor turned to her. With the mic still on, he said, “What the heck? They didn’t tell me seven stories.”
Serenity yanked the mic from him. “This city—my city—will build a new seven-story library in seven days. Starting…” She paused and looked at the back of the field, away from the crowd. The first truck bounced over the curb with a crash and rolled into the field behind her with more trucks lined up as far as she could see. They came with a roar and a giant dusty storm that blew over them all—and covered the blonde newsgirl with a thick coat of Maddington red clay.
Serenity didn’t need the mic to yell.
“Now! Welcome to the MAD!”
Then she took the mayor’s hat off and sailed it out into the crowd.
thirty-five
to the guest room
“THAT’S ALL GOOD,” said Serenity, “but it’s not solving anything.”
She was lying under the covers, naked, in the dark. Joe had woken her up in the middle of the night, touching her in a special way that usually brought fireworks. Tonight, it just interrupted her nightmare of mafia thugs with bent noses, and the squads of ninja police officers invading her library to get their money back. The man doing the touching and waking her up was himself a police officer, if not a ninja.
Joe pulled away, snatching the covers in the process. “Didn’t seem to be hurting anything either,” he said.
Serenity snatched back her share of the covers—and then some—and lay there in the dark with her eyes wide open and her mind at the library. Every moment was a step on a tight wire, exhilarating because of the progress to a goal on the other side, but terrifying because the chasm below was so deep.
But if she was a tight rope walker these days, higher in the air than she’d ever been, she desperately needed her balancing pole beside her, the one who had always been in her corner.
She thought of the other sense of Joe’s pole. Yes, she needed that, too. She and Joe had always been clear about the wondrous, uplifting, balancing, spiritual importance of good sex. But, as much as her body wanted her to, it was hard for her to take that sense of Joe’s pole while she was mad at him for not being there as the balancing part of the terrifying, exhilarating life she was now living.
“Whatever,” she said to the mixed metaphor in her head.
Joe lay beside her, probably cold now that she had all the covers, but lying there silently, patiently.
“We’re going to have to talk about all this someday, Sweetblossom.”
“Nothing to talk about. Just not in the mood.”
“I know you’ve got a lot going on at the library these days, but there’s something more. The last couple of days, I don’t know what your mood is. You’re more excited and energetic than I’ve ever seen you, but I can’t get you to talk to me about anything. Or focus on lovemaking.”
“Maybe you just don’t know how to ‘talk’ to me lately,” she snapped. She regretted it, but there, she’d said it.
Joe sighed and got out of bed. “I feel like I don’t know how to do anything right with you these days,” he said with exaggerated calmness. “Used to be, we felt like one soul in two bodies, and the bodies craved to be joined together. Now you’re so far away I can’t tell what’s going on over there. But I can tell there is something going on. You even said last night there was something you couldn’t talk to me about. Funny thing about you, Sweetblossom, and one of the things I love about you, is that you won’t hesitate to go to war over something, but you are a terrible liar. It’s always obvious when you’ve got something you need to tell—and it’s just a matter of time until you do.”
“Nothing to tell,” Serenity said. “I’ve changed my mind. Nothing going on over here that concerns you at all.” But he was right and she felt the craving. Not just with her body, but with her soul. She needed all the answers and comfort that she knew were waiting for her in her other half.
But not the judgments. If he wanted to send her to jail, fine, and to hell with him. But not Doom. She wasn’t going to send an almost-child off to jail.
So this was all his fault.
“There is nothing in my life right now that concerns you one little bit,” she said.
“Well,” he said, pulling on his shorts, “whether it concerns me or not—or even if it’s something that would have concerned me a week ago and doesn’t in our brave new world—at least some of it’s a good thing. You’re walking with a purpose and smiling for no reason at all. I looked at you earlier and you were a million miles away, smiling and talking to yourself. Or talking to somebody who wasn’t there. Something, or somebody, has got you smiling. Smiling to yourself and frowning at me.”
He slipped back into bed, slid over to get under the edge of the covers she’d left him. When he put one arm around her she felt herself melt.
“I guess this’ll have to do,” he said. “Half a Sweetblossom is better than none, at least until she’s ready.”
She wanted to turn into him. It would be so easy to take a little comfort. And then so easy, after, so easy to slip up and say the wrong thing and watch everything come crashing down.
“Why don’t you go sleep in the guest room?” she heard herself say.
thirty-six
top hat walking
“THERE’S A DELAY,” said the mayor.
“No delays,” said Serenity. “Get this done before… the weather turns.”
The mayor, most of the council, and Serenity were sitting in the picnic area at the MAD the morning after the mayor’s inspirational speech. Serenity had bullied a Maddington big-box home improvement store into bringing every picnic table in their inventory down to the MAD. The tables converted the library patio into a food court and viewing area that looked out over the new construction. Local restaurants kept the table stocked with free food 24/7 for the workers, and for anyone who came to watch the new MAD going up in the lot next door. The barbecue stand on Hughes Road had stocked the tables this morning.